wheatley on chaos and complexity

8/12/2019 Wheatley on Chaos and Complexity

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Chaos and Complexity:Teach?

What Can Science

Keynote Address by Margaret J. Wheatley, Ed. D.

Everywhere around us and within us we ex-

perience complexity and diversity

Everywhere around us and within us we ex-

perience change, death, and renewal; order

and chaos; growth and decay that becomesnew life

Everywhere around us and within us we see

pattern upon pattern, ever-deepening levels

of complexity and variety

Why do we resist the vision or blind our-

selves to the beauty or fail to embrace the

learnings?

Each of us lives and works in organi-

zations designed from 17th century images of the uni-

verse. The universe of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon

was a seductive place filled with clockwork images

promising us prediction and reliability, teaching us to

view everything, including ourselves, as machines. We

learned to manage by separating things into parts. We

engaged in planning for our future that we would deter-

mine. We sought for more and more precise and correct

measuresof a world we thought was objective.

Forthree centuries we have been planning, predict-

ing and analyzing the world. We'v~ held on to an intense

belief of cause and effect and we've let numbers rule our

Iives. But at the end of the 20th century, our 17th centuryorganizations are crumbling. Our world grows more dis-

turbing and mysterious. Our failures to predict and con-

trol leer back at us from many places. Yetto what else

can we turn? If our world is not predictable, then our

approaches cannot work. But then, where are we?

Our organizations are strong complicated struc-

tures that are resistantto change, fearful of the future and

we have built them that way deliberately. We built them

that way to hold back the forces that seem to threaten

their very existence. We are afraid of what would hap-

pen if we lose our grip. If we let the elements of our or-

ganizations recombine or reconfigure or even to speaktruthfully to one another,we are afraid that things will fall

apart. We do not trust that this is a world of growth, reju-

venation and process. We believe we must provide the

energy to hold it together. By sheerforce of will, we have

resisted destruction. And if we let go, the world will dis-

integrate.

Yet,throughout the universe, things work very well

without us. Wherever we look, we see a landscape of

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Yet, throughout the universe, things work very well

without us. Wherever we look, we see a landscape of

movement and complexity, of forms that come and go, of

structures that are not from organizational charts or job

descriptions, but from impulses arriving out of deep natu-

ral processes of growth and of self-renewal. In our desire

to control our organizations, we have detached ourselves

from the forces that create order in the universe. Allthese years we have confused control with order. So

what if we reframed the search? What if we stop looki ng

for control and begin the search for order, which we can

see everywhere around us in living dynamic systems?

It is time, I believe, to become a community of in-

quirers, serious explorers seeking to discover the essence

of order-order we will find even in the heart of chaos.

It is time to relinquish the limits we have placed on our

organizations, time to release our defenses and fear.

Time to take up new lenses and explore beyond our

known boundaries. It is time to become full participants

in this universe of emergent order.

To the early Greeks, the universe that they inhab-

ited was peopled with many primordial beings. The first

two founding parents of all that we observe in life were

two gods: Chaos, the original abyss of darkness, and

Gaea, the earth mother, the generative force. These two

partners worked in tandem. Gaea knew that she would

be unable to create anything that was alive without

reaching into the dark abyss of Chaos and pulling forth

what she needed from there to give form to Iife. These are

very different assumptions about the workings of chaos

and order than those that have played into our work.To start, I would like to say that we function as a

community of people who still want to make a differ-

ence. People who really want to change life in organiza-

tions for all of us. Who really want organizations to feel

alive and worth working in, and adaptive and resilient;

organizations that no longer worry about managing

change, but instead, real ize that change is a constant

process of life. I assume that's who we are.

Given the assumption of our good hearts and our

good intent, there are several other assumptions that,

when I look at it, are severely hampering our work. I am

going to list three, some of which are fading in potency

already. But I also know how deep these assumptions

are imbedded in me personally.

ASSUMPTION #1: ORGANIZATIONS ARE

MACHINES

The first assumption is that organizations are, in

fact, dead. They are machines. This is the 17th century

imagery of Sir Isaac Newton, that the world is a clock-

work machine. We have really bought this one! Just

look at our language. We have tools and techniques.

We have technologies. We have methodologies. We

have mechanisms. We have levers for change. We have

hands-on applications. It is really hard to avoid using a

machine metaphor. I have tried to avoid it and they still

just creep right in. It's part of our deep thought process.

It is time, I believe, to

become a community of

inquirers, serious explorers

seeking to discover the

essence of order.

From Chandler to Michael Porter, people who have made

enormous contributions to organizational strategy all

came from engineering backgrounds. And today, what

do we have? Reengineering! I hope this is the last gasp

of the machine model.

ASSUMPTION #2: CHANGE HAPPENS AS ARESULT OF EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

The second assumption that we've labored under is

that change happens as a result of some external influ-

ence. Here again, our language is quite revealing. We

consider ourselves to be change agents or change mas-ters. Our whole field of organizational development says

that organizations need to be developed by us-who else

but us. Change, in this assumption, is something we do.

We make it happen. We impose it on the organization.

We have long discussions on where to intervene-do

you start at the top, do you start at the bottom, do you

hope for the middle? We talk about strategies that need

to cascade down throughout the whole organization.

We talk about training designs in which everyone must

participate. We see the change as some external force

that is imposed on this inert lump of an organization.

ASSUMPTION #3: THINGS FALL APART

The third assumption is the one that I personally

find the hardest to let go of-it is that "things fall apart."

It is the natural tendency of all living things, as our cul-

ture has taught us. We subscribe to the second law of

thermodynam ics (wh ich we have misunderstood but

have deeply taken into our consciousness) that the natu-

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ral state of everything is to decline and die, and to turn to

rust in front of our eyes. And that the only way to avoid

this tendency toward deterioration and death is to come

in with our good creative energy and impose it on the

system.

This has been a very fearsome and costly posture-

for all of Western culture. But it is this great belief that,

"without me, the world doesn't work." If you talk to me

about letting go of control, it meansthe world is going to

fail. I don't know what else this is if it's not playing God,

and that is a fearsome prospect.

Theseassumptions blind us to some very wonderful

truths.

TRUTH #1: ORGANIZATIONS ARE LIVING,

DYNAMIC SYSTEMS

The first truth, which you have discovered in your

own work, is that it is much more fun to view organiza-tions as living, dynamic, breathing systemswith a life of

their own. These are wonderful beings, these organiza-

Nothing held long enough

to see a result. And

among consultants that I

talked with, there was

always wonder if

something really worked.

tions. We don't understand them but if we think of them

as alive, a whole different approach is available to us.

TRUTH #2: CHANGE IS AN INHERENT

CAPACITY OF LIVING SYSTEMS

The second truth is that change is an inherent ca-

pacity of living systems. All of us are here, no matter

what we are on the planet, no matter what kind of life

form we are, have a deeply imbedded process to create

ourselves, to maintain ourselves and to change ourselves

if required, to survive. Idon't think other living systems

take classeson "resistance to change." But I don't know,

because I don't communicate with them. We need to

start observing that change is a processthat we are capa-

ble of and that perhaps we even know how to handle, if

we could clear away this debris of 20th century thinking.

TRUTH #3: ORDER IS INHERENT IN THE

UNIVERSE

Lastly, our deep assumptions have prevented us

from seeing that order is inherent in the universe. There

is in each of us a tendency to organize toward greater and

greater levels of order or complexity.

THE SEARCH FOR NEW LENSES

The question from yesterday's session with the

Sages was, "Are we doing significant, authentic work?

Are we not polluting organizations by our presence?" In

working with other consultants, I noticed how rare it was

for consultants to feel they had accomplished something

of value that was going to last. There was far too much

change, far too much turbulence. Nothing held long

enough to see a result. And among consultants that I

talked with, there was always wonder if something really

worked.

Four years ago I embarked on work that was new

and interesting, which I approached very fearfully. I was

intrigued by natural science. I think there are many

places to look for new ways of seeing, and I realized as I

entered into that inquiry, that something was required of

me that I wasn't quite ready to do. What was required

was moving into a state of "not knowing," to be willing

to give up the tools and techniques by which I had made

my bread and butter. I wrote about this need to throw

everything I knew into an abyss and to face the unknown.

I must say that a few years down the road now I actuallyfind this process fun. It has gotten to the point where I

can say,"Well, what else can we throwaway? Let's look

for a deeper level of certainty here and let go of it." It was

Voltaire, the French philosopher, who said, "Doubt is not

a very pleasant status, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

Also I have had some experience now in letting go

of some very tried and true techniques and being out

there in an experimental mode. And it does take a par-

ticular kind of client to experiment. I saythat asa casual

off-hand, but the whole foundation for why any of us can

do anything different is that c I ients are willing to step into

the void with us. But I have seen many encouraging

signs. I've witnessed large groups engaged in a self-or-

ganizing process who didn't need us as expert facilita-

tors. I have seen people who were tired and cynical and

just plain fed up, become hopeful and engaged because

the work that they were engaged in was work of creation

and not problem solving. I've seen learnings spread

through an organization with a speed that no theory ever

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predicted. And I've seen people become advocates of

the power of learning that is available to them when they

are willing to stay in a process that is fuzzy, ambiguous

and open. And some of these people were SJs.

Now I painted that real fast brushstroke of things

that feel interesting to me and even wondrous at times. I

say this only to indicate what Joel Barker has been saying

for years, that "What is difficult or impossible with oneparadigm may be easy with another." Einstein said

something very similar. He said, "No problem can be

solved from the same consciousness that created it."

So what is this shift in consciousness that is re-

quired of us and what is the true paradigm that needs to

change? I believe that it is a simple but profound world

shattering recognition that we do inhabit a well-ordered

universe. It functions well, even without us. Stewart

Kaufmann, a scientist working in complexity theory, has

said, "This is a world where you get order for free." Or-

der arises spontaneously when you create simple con-

nections. If you require simple connections among thou-

sands upon thousands of individual elements, a pattern

of organization emerges. We get order for free.

This discovery of order has moved most dramati-

cally in the past 20 years in the area of science first

known as chaos. Now it is a more complex science. Of

course, mystics in every spiritual tradition have known

about this order for a very long time.

FINDING ORDER IN CHAOS

One of the great gifts that chaos science provides isthat order is found in chaos. A system in chaos is defined

as a system that, from moment to moment, is totally un-

predictable. You cannot predict where it is going next.

With the creation of three-dimensional space on high

speed computers, scientists could plot the movement of

a system in chaos. When plotted on a two-dimensional

scale, it looked totally unpredictable-like an EKG gone

biserk. But when converted into multidimensional

space, you could track many variables at once. The sys-

tem, from moment to moment, zoomed from one part of

the screen to another. You couldn't predict what would

happen next. But over time, you came to realize that the

system conformed to a boundary. It had an inherent

shape that it did not violate. It would not move out of this

boundary. Plots that are simple, nonlinear equations,

over many iterations and after tracking behavior over a

very long time, produced symmetrical patterns. Those

images have been named "strange attractors." There are

many other kjnds of attractors in science. These were

called strange by two scientists who said, "It was a suit-

able and psychologically suggestive name for these ob-

jects of astonishing beauty of which we knowso little."

I think there are some very important learnings in

chaos.

LESSON #1: YOU CANNOT SEE ORDER INCHAOS MOMENT TO MOMENT

You cannot see the order in chaos if you are looking

moment to moment. You cannot seeorder if you are mi-

cromanaging. You cannot see order if you are managing

individual behaviors. These strange attractors draw at-

tention to one of the great paradoxes of chaos science,

which is that you get order without predictability. I urge

you to think about that statement. We didn't grow up

believing you got order if you weren't predicting it, con-

trolling it and making it happen. So how do you get or-

der without predictability? Through a strange combina-

tion of a rule of randomness, which at the human level is

individual autonomy, and a rule of specification. There

is an initial formula or equation. But you combine this

initial formula with individual behavior. If you look mo-

ment to moment, you will not seea pattern. You will see

what looks like a system out of control because the be-

havior jumps allover the place. But, if you stand back far

enough, if you wait over time, scale or distance, you will

observe the order that's in chaos. If we do that, then we

can see the pattern.

LESSON #2: CHAOS BREEDS

SELF-ORGANIZATION AND CREATIVITY

A second learning from the science of chaos is that

chaos servesa function. It is in the darknessof chaos that

our self-organizing processes,our creativity, comes forth.

You cannot see the order

in chaos if you are looking

moment to moment ....

You cannot see order if you

are managing individual

behaviors.

I would like you to think about a time in your life when

you were confronted with a real darkness-a dark night

of the soul, a time of utter confusion, a feeling you

couldn't make senseof the world anymore in a way that

you were accustomed to. Depression is a frequent com-

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panion to these events in our lives. Think about what

happened to you, the other side of your own personal

chaos. What was available to you in terms of your expe-

rience and self-identity, once you had passedthrough this

dark night of chaos? Now, there are two paths that one

can take. The first is the path toward destruction and

death. The other is the path that moves through chaos to

a greater senseof peace, of enhanced capacity, knowingyou can handle life, that you have survived. Some peo-

ple feel quite pleased with their learning, they feel a new

sense of hope. They return to a state that feels calm.

That is the lesson of the usesof chaos for self-organiza-

tion.

We believed in the path of the second law of ther-

modynamics: that any systemmoving into chaos was on

the road to certain death. There was only one way

through and that was pretty awfu I. At the end of the

1970s, Ilya Prigogene won the Nobel Prize for exploring

what happens to living organic systemswhen confronted

We need to encourage

more of the workings of

chaos in our personal lives

and in our organizational

interventions.

with high levels of stress and turbulence. He found that

they reached a point in which they let go of their presentstructure. They fell apart, they disintegrated. But they had

two choices. They could die or reorganize themselves in

a self-organizing process and truly transform their ability,

their capacity to function well in their changing environ-

ment.

This self-organizing process feeds on information

that is new, disturbing and different. We are confronted

with information we cannot fit into the present structure,

and our first responseto that kind of information (whether

we are molecules or CEOs) is to discount it. We push it

away. But the information becomes so large and mean-

ingful that the system cannot hold it, then the system will

fall apart. But it will fall apart with the opportunity to

reconfigure itself around this new information in a way

that is more adaptive and healthier. It can suddenly ex-

plode, grow and change.

Erich jantsch, a systemsscientist, said that "Self-or-

ganization lets us feel a quality of the world which gives

birth to ever new forms against a background of constant

change." That giving birth to ever new forms against a

background of constant change is my personal quest for

organizations. How do you create the self-organizing

process? I am not going to give you answers; I don't have

them yet. I think this is part of our work for the next dec-

ade. But there is something about the uses of chaos that

could profoundly change our work right now. If self-or-

ganization is only available through this passage into

chaos, then we need to be very thoughtful about how tocreate chaos intentionally at the right moment in our or-

ganizational interventions. You cannot get true transfor-

mation without chaos. Because in chaos, when people

are overwhelmed, confused and fed up with you as a fa-

cilitator, they let go. And what they let go of is their pre-

sent construction of reality. They hate being confused,

but then something happens in which the intelligence

and creativity of the group comes together and what they

get is a transforming result.

This is a really difficult learning for 20th century

Western folks who feel so good at getting themselves out

of hard spaces. But, in fact, we needto encourage more

of the workings of chaos in our personal lives and in

our organizational interventions. It is a very powerful

force.

LESSON #3: COMPLEXITY ARISES FROM

SIMPLICITY

The third learning of complexity science is that at

the heart of complex systems is simplicity. Complexity

seems to evolve from very simple patterns that build on

one another. When we were all saddled with Euclideangeometry, we looked for perfect forms. We looked for

perfect spheres, cubes, triangles, boxes, organization

charts, etc., all of which are perfect Euclidean creations

(useless as the geometry of Euclid was to explain what

was really going on in real life.) Benoit Mandelbrot, who

coined the word "fractal," said, "Look around us.

Mountai ns are not cones, clouds are not spheres and

lightening doesn't fall in a straight line. How can we un-

derstand this complexity of form that we are seeing?" He

concluded that if you try and look for a pattern and look

deeply into the object, you will seethat the pattern re-

peats itself at different levels of scale. But if you identify

the pattern, you have identified the essence of that very

complex shape.

I want to look at a few natural fractals with you. A

fern is a classic object because the dominant fern pattern

is repeated on the fronds. Patterns in the branches of

trees are repl icas of the whole tree. As you look at fi ner

and finer levels of scale you see the patterns repeating.

Look for the dominant shape in clouds and see if you can

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identify the shape in smaller segments. This is another

way of understanding the geometry of mountains,

clouds, beaches, forests and such. The figure below con-

tains several examples of fractals.

This notion of looking for patterns as a way of deal-

ing with complexity is quite profound. Instead of looking

for linear solutions to problems, take a nonlinear ap-

proach. Look at behavior over time. Formulas are a

When you change how you look at the system, bringing

in time, distance and multiple dimensions, you can see

order. Second, chaos is the root to creativity. And with-

out the passage of chaos and letting go, we cannot hope

to truly transform anybody's thinking. Third, complexity

can be understood as some very simple patterns or some

very simple rules of interaction, that, over time, create

wonderfully complex forms.

process to be unfolded. Examine the behavior of an un-

predictable evolving formula in the space of a computer.

It reveals a deep inner creativity which is woven in the

very fabric of existence. One of the great thrills of fractal

observation is that it is very much like looking out into

the night sky but reversing the projection. As you look

deeply into a fractal, you are exploring regions that never

end. And wherever you look, you will always see the

same pattern.There is something to be said here about identifying

and managing patterns in organizations rather than man-

aging people. I hope I am laying the groundwork for

years to come, moving away from a focus on individuals

to a focus on what are the key behaviors, patterns that we

want to have in place in this organization and in the great

dream of a fractal organization, we would seethat behav-

ior everywhere we looked. If we peered deeply into the

organization, we would seethe same pattern in place. I

have worked with senior leaders who are very intent on

trying to figure out the patterns of behavior they would

like in place, and help them to realize that their task is to

ensure that those patterns are well known and to remove

themselves from the day-to-day management of individ-

ual behavior.

Now I have gone rather quickly through some very

profound sciences, but those three key sensibilities,

whether you take the sciences literally or metaphorically

are that, first, in the heart of chaos, order is available.

TRANSFORMATION THROUGH

INFORMATION

Ikujiro Nonaka, a Japanesetheorist who has been

looking at chaos and self-organization for a few years

now, said, "Whether or not an order is formed depends

on whether or not information is created. The essenceof

order is in the creation of information." This is a pro-

found quote. What is challenging about this is that this isnot the way senior executives think about information.

They don't see it as an ally in their search for order; they

see it as a resource that must be carefully controlled in

order to maintain their sense of order for their organiza-

tion. But, if we truly want an organization to organize

itself, to do it without the imposition of structures and

plans and reengineering and templates and models, then

we have to build a very different theory of information in

organizations.

In the old model, information is power. If I choose

not to reveal to you my sources, or what I know, or the

timing of when I tell you something-I have power. We

have used information as a way of controlling other peo-

ple's behavior in organizations. We've held onto it very

tightly. We've also used it to regulate behavior. To see if

we are meeting plans, to seeif we have met our goals, to

see if our processes are up to performance standards. We

have seen information as negative, as regulatory feed-

back that provides us with data so that we can correct our

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behavior and get back to where we want to be. That kind

of information doesn't take us into the future; it doesn't

take us into any transforming processes.

The kind of information that does create fundamen-

tal shifts in the self-organizing system is always informa-

tion that it doesn't want to hear. It is information that is

new and disconfirming, that is difficult and challenging.

Chaos is a state of information richness. One of theswitches we made in our understanding of chaos is that

it is no longer an abyss-it's filled with information that

we cannot make sense of. Self-organizing systems only

change when they are confronted with information that

they cannot absorb into their existing structure. Or in

Senge's words, would change when we couldn't absorb

the information into our existing mental model. Claude

Shannon, one of the early information theorists, said that

"Information is that which changes us." Even in his defi-

nition there is this sense that if you want change, you

have to have information. You can't change without it.

Only when we allow organizations to look at troubling

information and trust people within them to reorganize

around that information that we get truly transforming

levels of change. Only then can we get self-organiza-

tion. What self-organization is saying is that the struc-

ture wi II emerge to fit the situation. If people have suffi-

cient information and sufficient knowledge and good lev-

els of skill for thinking, they will then form around the

information. Their structure will change, it will be tem-

porary, it will be fluid.

The kind of information

that does create

fundamental shifts in the

self-organizing system is

always information that it

doesn't want to hear.

However, most organizations do not trust their peo-

ple to act as adults. The other stumbling block to using

information as an organizing element is our great fear orour great belief that you cannot have order without pre-

dictability.

THE QUESTIONS WE NEED TO ASK

I want to close by putting out a few more areas in

which a lot of thinking needs to be done. David Ruelle,

who is a chaos scientist (now they are known as "chaolo-

gists"), said about his work in chaos, "My answers are

modest and tentative but worth knowing" I would like to

saythat the questions I want to leave uswith are tentative

but worth asking:

Question 1: If we could manage complex organiza-

tions by simple patterns then how would that shift our

work?We would probably become much more seriously

engaged in looking at processesthat support the creation

and sustenance of patterns. We would have to make sure

that the right ones are in place. How do you know they

are the right ones? Well, you examine their effects over

time. This is tricky stuff.

We would also need to encourage the leadership of

the organization to ensure that these patterns are consis-

tent, that their concern is to manage the pattern, not the

people. This is a vast area for inquiry and experimenta-

tion.

Question 2: If chaos is the root to truly transforming

organizations, then how confident and supportive can

we be about processes that use chaos intentionally?

I have to admit that I've worked with chaos science

for a few years and intentional chaos with organizations

for a year and a half and for the first year, every time a

group went into chaos, I panicked. I wanted to whip out

the fl ip charts and the markers and structu re them into

feelings of security. It Is a very difficult experience at the

beginning to use chaos, because everything in us

screams that something has gone very wrong. But each

of us do have these experiences in our own lives of hav-

ing seen the good effect of chaos. So we need to be, as

one scientist asked managers to be, "equilibrium bust-

ers." We need to realize, as Burt Nanus said in The

Lea der 's Ed ge, "If you're not confused, you're not think-

ing clearly."

PUSHING FOR CHAOS

I am pushing for more messiness, greater confu-

sion, and greater ambiguity. We need to figure out howto create disconfirming information in our organizations

and keep it present. We need scanning devises. We

need to keep talking to more and more people who have

a stake in the organization. We need to realize that di-

versity is the way in which life creates itself. Diversity is

what is at the root of all life and we need to find ways to

realize that it is the source of our creativity in organiza-

tions. It's a much bigger issuethan we even thought.

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My last assertion is that if information is the source

of new order, then we need very different theories of in-

formation. We need to let down our barriers in organiza-

tions, and in ourselves. yve need to move to a position

taken by Gore Associates (manufacturers of Goretex),

who use the metaphor that information is like salmon-

they just had to release it. Salmon find their spawning

grounds. Flush them into the system and see where theygo. We need a different imagery around information.

We need to let down our

barriers in organizations,

and in ourselves.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Many learnings of chaos science are new, but I also

want to recognize the elders who have gone before. In

the 1940s, when Eric Trist was looking into what hap-

pened in coal mines in Great Britain, he noticed what is

essentially a self-organizing process. In reading about

the early years of 00on the walls yesterday, people

talked about the magic, the sense of discovery, and the

sense of invention. When flip charts and markers were

the greatest thing because of what they allowed you to

do, when suddenly you were focused on human issues

and process and you were building networks among hu-

man beings rather than these old rigorous, scientific man-

agement, engineering models. The beauty of being part

of that discovery was what was really compelling. I be-

lieve that kind of hope is available to us again. I believe

that kind of gift of new visions, which allow us to peer

more deeply into organizations and make sense of them

in an age where there is not a lot of sense to be had, I

believe that's available to us through many different

lenses.

I like new science, so I use that. We could peer

deeply into organizations through many different disci-

plines, but we cannot peer more deeply and with more

efficacy and better resolve if we hold on to w hat hasmade us great. Some of these pathways have been estab-

Iished for us in the past 50 years, and yet the new lenses

are different. We are no longer just peering into groups,

we are peering into the universe-a universe whose or-

der we barely noticed and seldom trusted in our work.

So, to embrace these new visions, these new learnings, I

think will take years of serious inquiry that I also hope is

playful. True paradigm shifts are really hard.

Joel Barker also taught us that when the paradigm

shifts, we all go down to zero. Past expertise doesn't

carryover. This is a troubling truth. But we may be at a

point in our field where everything, or almost everything

that has made us who we are, that has made us useful is

not going to work anymore. To stand at the edge of thatabyss and to throw in our tools and techniques and to

know that out of that process something more wonderful,

more useful, more helpful can come, I believe, is the real

challenge. It's not going to be solved in one conference;

this is the work of our lifetime. As organizations are let-

ting go of bureaucracy, we need to let go of the engineer-

ing machine imagery, which, at this point, is crippling us.

MY HOPES

Here are some hopes. I don't want "self-organiza-

tion" to become a buzzword. We cannot just take our

existing techniques and say, "OK, this is a self-organizing

process." We cannot say that self-managing teams are

necessarily self-organizing processes. We need to keep

the lens open and peer into these learnings more seri-

ously.

I hope we do this with care and rigor. That we just

don't superficially glean onto chaos or self-organization

or complexity. I hope that this community of inquiry

We are no longer just

peering into groups, we

are peering into the

universe.

builds on our knowledge and experience so that we truly

feel in a community together. I hope that each of us is

willing to throw into the abyss the tools and techniques

and applications, reengineering-all of these things that

are a holdover from a metaphor that doesn't make senseof the world anymore. In the midst of these hopes that I

have for the profession is the good news of chaos! And

the good news of chaos is that this is a very well ordered

world. In his own inquiries into the whole strangeness

of quantum physics, John Archibald Wheeler, the physi-

cist, expressed a hope that I share: "To my mind, there

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must be at the bottom of it all, not an equation or a for-

mula, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea

when finally we discover it, will be so compelling, so in-

evitable, that we will sayto one another,'Oh, how beau-

tiful. How could it have been otherwise?'"

Margaret J . Wheatley has been an associate profes-

sor of management at Brigham Young University, a con-

sultant to large and small organizations, and co-founder

of The Berkana Institute. Margaret was educated at the

University of Rochester and University College London,

received her Masters in communications at New York

University, and her doctorate from Harvard University in

the Program for Administration, Planning and Social Pol-

icy, with a primary focus on organizational theory and

interventions.

Margaret's consulting career began as a founding

member of Rosabeth Moss Kanter's firm, Goodmeasure,

Inc. Several years later she co-founded Ibis Consulting

Group, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is now a

principal of Kellner-Rogers & Wheatley, Inc., She also

speaks frequently to organizations and professional asso-

ciations on designing organizational structures and ap-

proaches that can sustain their integrity and resilience in

chaotic environments.

10 OD Practitioner

wheatley on chaos and complexity

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